Alumni Spotlight: Jimmy McKay

Class of 2016

Degree:

Doctorate of Physical Therapy

Current Role:

Director of Communications for FOX Rehabilitation

Jimmy McKay is a physical therapist, podcast host, and the director of communications for FOX Rehabilitation. He earned his Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Marymount University in 2016 after a degree in journalism and mass communication and a 15-year career in radio broadcasting. He works heavily in the intersection of science and communications with the goal to improve the knowledge translation in physical therapy and the sharing of experience between clinicians. 

While studying at Marymount he combined his previous career as a rock radio broadcaster and launched a podcast (PT Pintcast) with the goal of having casual conversations with experts in physical therapy over a beer. The show has gone on to be downloaded more than three million times in 175 countries around the world and has been ranked on the iTunes top 100 in the category of science and medicine. 

Jimmy is a Trustee for The Foundation for Physical Therapy Research as well as being a member and volunteer for the American Physical Therapy Association. While at Marymount he was a graduate assistant within the department of physical therapy. He currently resides in Orange County NY. 

What was your most memorable moment at Marymount University? 

My most memorable moment at Marymount didn’t occur on campus, or in the US! On a service-learning trip to Costa Rica, I met a boy who was living with Muscular Dystrophy. It was this point in my education where I was close to graduating but had no idea where in the profession of physical therapy that I would fit. I was there to treat and teach the patients we were assigned to about how to improve their function. But I was the one learning about life and where I could fit into the world from that 18-year-old patient who was living in an orphanage. I decided that the boy deserved a power wheelchair, something that would be well out of what he would likely ever able to afford. I wanted to make sure that he had that chair, that would change his minute to minute existence, before I walked across the stage at graduation. The class and Marymount community rallied around the idea and we raised $20,000+ in just sixty-six days to make that idea a reality. The experience was one that I will never forget and think about often when I’m making major life decisions. We learn a lot within classrooms, but what we learn outside of them can have a large impact on our lives.